Pages

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Is This A Slave To Fashion or A Fashion Crime?

I am not a fashionista. I mean, I love watching Fashion
Police, and I love trashing celebs with bad taste on the red carpet, but,
personally, I am not a Label Queen. I like no-name clothes and, in fact, the
only label you'll find in my wardrobe is Levis, and it's always been that way, so, imagine my horror at these new "shackle sneakers" from
Adidas.

Many are saying the shoes glamorize
slavery, and Adidas is under fire for their new JS Roundhouse Mids. Some
people are comparing them to the devices worn by black slaves in 19th Century
America, while I also see a little chain-gang action in there. And neither of those things says Good
Fashion to me.

And, well, this is the tagline, uploaded to
Facebook earlier this month: 'Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to
your ankles?'

More than 2,000 Facebookers have labeled
the design 'offensive' and 'ignorant' and say the firm has 'sunk to new lows'
in its 'slavewear' product. Dr Boyce Watkins, writing for Your Black World,
said: 'Shackles. The stuff that our ancestors wore for 400 years while
experiencing the most horrific atrocities imaginable."

And let's not even start
talking about how they are just plain ugly.

Adidas, for their part, has released a statement:

"The
design of the JS Roundhouse Mid is nothing more than the designer Jeremy
Scott’s outrageous and unique take on fashion and has nothing to do with
slavery. Jeremy Scott is renowned as a designer whose style is quirky and lighthearted
... Any suggestion that this is linked to slavery is untruthful."

If
it looks like shackles then it its shackles. And shackles remind folks of
slaves and/or criminals, and they aren't a very effective way to market a ridiculously ugly and offensive pair of shoes.

Like many, I was sort of surprised that someone, let alone a designer, thought this was "quirky and lighthearted." No one, not the designer or Adidas, for a moment thought this was going to be offensive? I don't buy that for a second.

What was hoped was that suburban middle-class white boys who think they're thugs would find them cool. And that no one would notice until later.

What CEO's of major corporations are learning (or catching up, maybe) is that American's cannot be lead like lambs to the slaughter anymore. Social media has awoken the silent voice that has been stamped down by large company's who only pray to one thing, Wall Street.

And legal can craft some duplicitous press release like this and make lite of what is an obvious offensive product all they want. Adidas allowed, and was going to mass produce, a shoe that is clearly offensive to a lot of people.

Except, of course, to the old white douche dude CEO of a major shoe company.